The particular reality of myth

The particular reality of myth

"Focused on what is living in it, myth is not an explanation meant to satisfy scientific curiosity but a narrative that brings an original reality to life and that responds to a deep religious need, to moral aspirations, to constraints, to imperatives of a social order and even to practical demands."

Bronisław Malinowski

Mircea Eliade holds that myth is an extremely complex reality, one that could be approached and interpreted in different ways, often complementary. Myth would recount, in general, a sacred story that relates an event which took place during a primordial time, the golden age, the fabulous time in which everything began. In this sense, the cosmogonic myth is “true” since the existence of the world is there to demonstrate that the myth happened and continues to happen: the myth of death exists because human mortality proves it so.

There would exist, however, two categories of mythological narratives: those that refer to “primordial time,” whose stories presuppose a substantial modification of the everyday world, and those narratives whose events did not entail a drastic consequence for the human condition.

With regard to the first of these categories, it is possible to affirm that the mythic type constitutes a reality outside of reality, transfigured by the intervention of Supernatural Beings. In some cultures, the individual, by participating in the experience that brings him into contact with this mythological knowledge, inserts and integrates himself into that fabulous time, making himself a contemporary of the evoked events See examples in Australian mythology.

Characteristics of mythical narratives

1. It constitutes the history of the acts of Supernatural Beings.

2. The story is considered True (because it refers to realities) and Sacred (because it is the work of Supernatural Beings).

3. It refers to a “creation” in the sense that it recounts how something came into existence or how a behaviour, an institution, a way of working were founded; this is the reason why myths constitute the paradigms of every significant human act.

1. By knowing the myth, the subject knows the “origin” of things and can therefore come to master and manipulate them at will. This is not an “external” or “abstract” knowledge but a knowing that is “lived” ritually, whether by ceremonially narrating the myth or by performing the ritual for which it serves as justification.

2. In one way or another the myth is “lived” in the sense that one is dominated by the sacred power that exalts the events which are remembered and reactualized.

“Living” myths presupposes a religious experience since it differs from the experience of everyday life. The religiosity of the mythic experience is due to the actualization of the fabulous, exalting and significant events; one witnesses anew the creative works of the Supernatural Beings. Myths “reveal” that the world, humanity and life have a supernatural origin and history, and that this history is meaningful and exemplary.